Just Ignore Him: A BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick

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Davies appears as the only permanent panellist on the BBC Two comedy quiz game QI, which was hosted by Stephen Fry from 2003 to 2015, and then by Sandi Toksvig. At last I understand the cheeky lad on QI and if I ever see you in a comedic display on the floor I will salute your mother! How heartbreaking it is to read that when the first secret “special cuddle” occurred, the eight-year-old boy was so deprived of affection and soft words from his surviving parent that even though he knew, instinctively, it was wrong and strange for his father to caress his naked buttocks, the relief of being treated kindly for once eclipsed the shame. Lacking friends at school, he tried to impress by being loud and obnoxious, and to fill his emotional void with petty theft. Even into middle age it wasn’t possible to discuss his father’s ‘eccentricities’ with his siblings or other relatives.

The loneliness that Alan feels throughout his life, from the absence of love and laughter, just broke me. Alcohol’s an interesting one because it’s everywhere you go and if you are having a period when you’re not drinking, you’ll get offered a drink every day. I haven't smacked mine [as he was a lot as a child] but I've grabbed hold of them and I've shouted at them and I've struggled to control my temper with them and it is really, really difficult, parenting. It might be reviewed and talked about and once the book’s out, there’ll be all kinds of things online and it’s not something I can control or want to control, but I don’t want to talk about it.

Marrying at the age of 40 (he says he wasn't ready before) and having a family of his own has been transformative. Having bought Just Ignore Him with no prior knowledge of its contents, just my misguided assumptions, I was disturbed by its grim contents. Both work and therapy have helped and Davies remains grateful to his friend Jo Brand for suggesting a therapist when he was in his late twenties (this led to eight-year therapy that seems to have had an emphasis on cognitive behaviour). He is so evidently super-bright that I had assumed – before reading the book – that he was a smart grammar school boy (in fact he went to the same private school as his father and grandfather) who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge; his natural destination, as an acknowledged “brainbox” before he went off the rails as a teenager, becoming a compulsive thief and vandal. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you.

He abused us his daughters while my mum was alive and then moved on to my brother when I was strong enough to put a stop to it. As Davies notes so plaintively about the legacy of families, “This is the true inheritance tax of life.

It was Katie who wanted to recreate her own childhood, to some extent, and have a large family, "but I had nothing that I wanted to recreate.

Alan tells his story, grim as it is at times, threaded through with his trademark humour, which again cements my belief that humour is a wonderful coping mechanism, probably the best and most effective one we have, I've certainly found it so. His record stood until Joel Corry achieved 41 successful cracks at Capital's Jingle Bell Ball on 12 December 2021.Support is available for those who may be distressed by phoning Lifeline 13 11 14; Mensline 1300 789 978; Kids Helpline 1800 551 800; beyondblue 1300 224 636. There was no real sense of a timeline for a lot of the book so I wasn't entirely sure where everything fitted in the grand scheme of things. He also contributed "four words" to the QI book The Book of General Ignorance (which appear after Stephen Fry's foreword), "Will this do, Stephen? Funny in a wonderfully understated, deadpan, sarcastic way with occasional bursts of schoolboy silliness. It doesn't shy away from the horrors of Davies' childhood as the reader may, at times, wish it would but speaks openly and factually about abuse and manipulation.

His publishers did not communicate this to newspapers, at least in the case of his interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, who chose to publish details about the book's subject matter along with extracts from the interview where Davies explains why he did not want the details to be published. Second quote is the last paragraph in the book “Above all, I have set out to tell you the things you don’t know about me, in the hope that, one day, perhaps, you will feel able to tell someone what they don’t know about you.

In late 2007, The Times and The Daily Telegraph both reported that Davies bit the ear of a homeless man. Alan Davies, the English stand-up comedian, actor, quiz show panellist and author, has written a new book, Just Ignore Him – a memoir of his childhood in which some horrible things happen that reverberate through his whole life. How heartbreaking it is to read that when the first secret "special cuddle" occurred, the eight-year-old boy was so deprived of affection and soft words from his surviving parent that even though he knew, instinctively, it was wrong and strange for his father to caress his naked buttocks, the relief of being treated kindly for once eclipsed the shame. Remembering things from my childhood too like Bob a Job and collecting green stamps so you will enjoy his many recollections of adolescence. Davies's first book, the autobiographical My Favourite People and Me, 1978–88 was published by Michael Joseph ( Penguin Books) in September 2009.